Robert "Kool" Bell is the bass player in the band, and with drummer George Brown responsible for the funky rhythms that propel songs such as "Get Down On It" and "Jungle Boogie." Here he's seen in concert at Staples Center in Los Angeles on June 1, 2012.

At first, plenty of people thought it seemed like an odd pairing: Kool & the Gang opening up for Van Halen on the arena tour that brings them to Anaheim and Los Angeles over the next few days? How is that going to work?

Brothers Eddie and Alex Van Halen weren’t convinced. Even Robert “Kool” Bell, one of the four original members of Kool & the Gang, wasn’t sure it would work.

But Van Halen singer David Lee Roth would not be deterred, Bell says.

“David Lee Roth saw our show at the Glastonbury music festival (in England) last year, which is all rock groups,” Bell says. “And he went back to Eddie and Alex to say, ‘Hey, man, this is who I’d like to be the support act on our 40th year tour.’ And they all said, ‘What? Hard rock and pop funk?’

David told me, he said, ‘Fifty percent of our audience are ladies, and you’re the band who did ‘Ladies Night.’ He said in the ‘80s we were the rock party band and you guys were the pop funk party band of the ‘80s.

“He said, ‘It seems like a party to me, Kool, so let’s go have a party!’” Bell says.

Turns out Diamond Dave knows a party when he sees – and hears – one. The tour that kicked off in February has been one of those rare ones where the opening act gets more than cursory attention as fans trickle in from the merch tables and beer stands before the headliner comes on.

“What’s happening now, as the show’s been out a couple of months, people are responding on the ‘net how they really like the combination,” says Bell, 61, the bass player in the band. “And now people are getting to the show early. We’re finding that by the time we get halfway through our show we’ve got an 80 percent full house.”

It helps, of course, that Kool & the Gang have such a strong catalog of hits, songs such as “Jungle Boogie,” “Get Down On It,” and “Celebration,” all three of which they’ve typically played on this tour. Bell says the group’s longevity and adaptability in the years since it formed in 1964 helped it stay relevant in the memories of music fans, over the years.

“We kind of mixed it up over the years,” he says. “We had the early jazz influences in the early days, Freddie Hubbard, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and those guys. And at the same time we were listening to Motown – the Temptations, the Miracles – and to James Brown. So that became the first combination of styles.

As the ‘60s ended and the ‘70s began, Kool & the Gang added more soul and funk to the mix, releasing early hits such as “Funky Stuff” and “Hollywood Swinging,” the latter of which Van Halen covered in its early L.A. club days.

“Then we decided we needed to get a lead singer because people like Earth, Wind and Fire had Philip Bailey and the Commodores had Lionel Richie, so we decided that to be competitive we needed to be like that,” Bell says, explaining how in the late ‘70s and ‘80s the band brought on board singers like James “J.T.” Taylor and scored a different kind of hit with songs such as “Ladies Night,” “Cherish” and “Joanna.”

But more than any of those songs, “Celebration” remains the band’s signature hit.

“I think it was a timing thing with that,” Bell says. “The first lead singer song was ’Ladies Night’ and it was an international hit, kind of like a national anthem. So ‘Celebration’ came about because we were actually celebrating that our career had taken another step.

“We were at the American Music Awards and we got two awards that night,” he says. “And then my brother (Ronald Khalis Bell) came up with that idea because we were celebrating.”

Over the last decade or so, Kool & the Gang have seen an upswing in their popularity thanks to the sampling practices of hip-hop artists – “Summer Madness” played a huge part in Will Smith’s hit “Summertime,” and stars such as Janet Jackson and Madonna also dipped into the funky beats in the band’s back catalogue, Bell says. Director Quentin Tarantino’s use of “Jungle Boogie” in the ‘90s movie “Pulp Fiction” also brought that song back some 20 years after its creation.

“We had a rebirth of fans that went back to what we were doing in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” Bell says.

Which eventually led to Glastonbury.

Which eventually led to the Van Halen tour.

After it takes a break at the end of June, Bell says Kool & the Gang have their own dates scheduled in Europe. There are talks of touring with other ’70s-era bands, too.

Bell says that Ben Elton, the British comedian and writer who created the musical “We Will Rock You” based on the songs of Queen, has approached the band to talk about making a similar musical out of its songs. And Bell also has a reality TV series he’s developing called “Making It Kool,” in which he’d work with musicians who gave up their dreams of that life for the security of more traditional jobs, trying to “show them they can still make it (and) things can still be cool.”

For now though, he and his tenor saxophone-playing brother Ronald, alto sax player Dennis Thomas and drummer George Brown will keep on playing that funky stuff before Van Halen takes the stage each night. These four guys have been together since 1964 back in Jersey City, and you wonder how they’ve managed to stay together when so many other groups do not.

“It’s amazing and a blessing,” Bell says. “I think we kind of like grew up together, 14, 15 years old. And our parents always told us, ‘Whatever you do as a group, make sure you stick together.’ Families have arguments, you might not talk for a few months, but he’s your brother and so you start talking to each other again.”

Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. with degrees in English and Communications. Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Earned his first newspaper paycheck at the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, fled the Midwest for Los Angeles Daily News and finally ended up at the Orange County Register. He's taught one or two classes a semester in the journalism and mass communications department at Cal State Long Beach since 2006. Somehow managed to get a lovely lady to marry him, and with her have two daughters. And a dog named Buddy. Never forget the dog.

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Kool & the Gang today include four original members, together since 1964. From left: alto sax player Dennis Thomas, drummer George Brown, bassist Robert 'Kool' Bell and his brother, tenor sax man Ronald Bell.

At first, plenty of people thought it seemed like an odd pairing: Kool & the Gang opening for Van Halen on an arena tour that brings them to Anaheim and Los Angeles over the next few days? How is that going to work?

Brothers Eddie and Alex Van Halen weren’t convinced. Even Robert “Kool” Bell, one of the four original members of Kool & the Gang, wasn’t sure it would work.

But Van Halen singer David Lee Roth would not be deterred, Bell says.

“(He) saw our show at the Glastonbury music festival (in England) last year, which is all rock groups,” he says. “And he went back to Eddie and Alex to say, ‘Hey, man, this is who I’d like to be the support act on our 40th year tour.’ And they all said, ‘What? Hard rock and pop-funk?’

“David told me, he said, ‘Fifty percent of our audience are ladies, and you’re the band who did ‘Ladies Night.’ He said, ‘In the ’80s we were the rock party band, and you guys were the pop-funk party band of the ’80s.

“He said, ‘It seems like a party to me, Kool, so let’s go have a party!’” Bell says.

Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. with degrees in English and Communications. Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Earned his first newspaper paycheck at the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, fled the Midwest for Los Angeles Daily News and finally ended up at the Orange County Register. He's taught one or two classes a semester in the journalism and mass communications department at Cal State Long Beach since 2006. Somehow managed to get a lovely lady to marry him, and with her have two daughters. And a dog named Buddy. Never forget the dog.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.